Cloudflare Keeps 1.1.1.1 Out of Piracy Blocking, Escapes Penalties in France

Cloudflare defended its refusal to block pirate sports streams via its public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 in France and the Paris Judicial Court accepted that approach, rejecting Canal+’s request for €50,000 per site per day in penalties. April orders had targeted 21 Formula 1 and 16 MotoGP domains and named both Cloudflare’s DNS and CDN, but left the blocking method open. Canal+ argued Cloudflare only blocked three domains via its CDN and therefore circumvented the ruling; the court accepted Cloudflare’s technical explanation that the public DNS architecture does not permit blocking, noted Cloudflare’s CDN geoblocking activity, and even treated Canal+’s own statistic (72.6% blocked, per Canal+) as evidence of meaningful compliance. The judges ruled intermediaries must take reasonable, not absolute, measures under the EU precedent cited and found Cloudflare not responsible when site operators moved to other CDNs or mirrors.

As a result, Cloudflare will continue to leave 1.1.1.1 unfiltered while using CDN-based geoblocking and a real-time stream-mitigation program that it says disrupts infringing live streams within seconds; transparency reports cited hundreds to over a thousand domains geoblocked in recent reporting periods. Canal+ may appeal, and similar disputes continue elsewhere (notably Quad9 facing a penalty request), but for now French courts declined to impose the heavy fines Canal+ sought and denied its request for legal costs.